THIS invention relates to a audio amplifier circuit, and to an audio power amplifier incorporating the audio amplifier circuit.
Many designs for audio amplifiers have been proposed, with varying degrees of success. Currently, it is considered desirable to minimise circuit complexity as far as practically possible, and to avoid the use of overall negative feedback in high fidelity audio amplifiers. Real-world amplifier designs tend to trade off various aspects of performance against one another, and against cost, in order to offer performance that is optimised in a desired area.
The greater majority of existing designs exhibit distortion characteristics which render negative feedback mandatory in order to lower the overall distortion to acceptable levels. This has the unfortunate effect of increasing phase distortion to an unacceptable degree. There is therefore a need for amplifier designs which have a characteristic distortion low enough to forego negative feedback, therefore presenting a more phase linear output signal.
It is an object of the invention to provide an alternative low distortion audio amplifier circuit.